SANTA CRUZ -- When the two Santa Cruz police detectives arrived at Jeremy Peter Goulet's bungalow, he refused to come out. So they began shouting with him through the closed front door.

He quickly disappeared and suddenly burst out of another door -- with a .45-caliber handgun that he legally owned. Then he opened fire. Sgt. Loran "Butch" Baker, 51, and Elizabeth Butler, 38, were dead on the spot.

"We now know that the detectives had absolutely no chance to protect themselves or return fire," Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak said Thursday. "They barely had the opportunity to turn and run."

The new details come two days after the police officers' deaths -- the first in Santa Cruz police history.

At the time, Goulet -- with a plane ticket and passport, and armed with two handguns -- was under investigation for a break-in and alleged sexual assault of a former co-worker.

On the day they went to his home, the plainclothes detectives were there to get Goulet's side of the story, Wowak said.

"They were in the process of interviewing Goulet and had spent some time with him," Wowak said. "During that interview, Goulet suddenly surprised the officers ... and shot and killed them within seconds."

Detectives haven't said how many shots Goulet fired, but one of them struck a woman on nearby Stanford Avenue, grazing her in the leg.

Baker and Butler were not wearing body armor, Wowak said, pausing to hold back tears. Even if they had been, he noted, "Body armor would not have helped the officers."

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After the ambush, Goulet then stole the detectives' guns and car keys and donned Baker's bulletproof vest found inside the car.

In the tense seconds that followed, Goulet drove about a block away to Doyle Street. He ditched the car on Doyle and "attempted to make his way back to his home," Wowak said. By then authorities had swarmed the area, including police, deputies and even State Parks rangers with rifles.

Six deputies and officers eventually cornered Goulet, who, with a gun in each hand -- one of them Baker's -- fired on the officers, three firefighters and bystanders. Four of the six officers returned fire.

Goulet died in a hail of bullets.

As the probe into Tuesday's deadly confrontation continued, more troubling details about Goulet's past surfaced.

In 2006, the former Black Hawk helicopter pilot beat charges that could have landed him in a military prison for life, with a former defense attorney saying the Army dropped two separate rape charges against Goulet in Hawaii. Santa Cruz County officials said Thursday they were investigating a previously unknown molestation case against the 35-year-old former barista, adding to a growing list of past sex and violence charges.

"These officers possessed limited information about Goulet. They were investigating a misdemeanor case. They had no information that led them to believe that they were in danger or that Goulet, at that time, was a danger to them," Wowak said.

First reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, the new revelations add to Goulet's history of peeping activity, with misdemeanor convictions in San Diego, Portland, Ore., and Berkeley.

On Friday, Goulet reportedly broke into the home of a co-worker after a night of drinking in an apparent sexual assault attempt, an incident that set in motion Tuesday's shooting deaths of the two police detectives.

That allegation -- which occurred after a night of after-work drinks, sources familiar with the incident say -- mirrors the facts behind a rape charge brought against Goulet while he served in the military. Army officials later agreed to drop all charges under a plea deal.

Former Goulet defense attorney Don Wilkerson in Hawaii said the first charges stemmed from an incident just days after being stationed at Wheeler Army Airfield, Honolulu.

A group of soldiers threw a party, which was attended by a young female officer who lived off base. After going home, locking her doors and going to bed, she was allegedly attacked by Goulet.

Rather than lock up Goulet, military brass grounded him and ordered him not to leave the base. He was assigned to watch over barracks.

Several months later, a group of military personnel in one of Goulet's barracks threw a party the night before deploying to Iraq. After that party, Goulet allegedly raped a second female officer.

After the second allegation, the military locked up Goulet in Naval Brig Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor, Wilkerson said. Goulet stayed there for several months.

He was discharged in early 2007, and immediately embarked for Portland, Ore.

Later that year, Goulet was arrested over a peeping incident and subsequent brawl, during which a gun was discharged. Beaten badly by the victim's boyfriend -- as well as the victim herself, who wielded a shelf -- a jury acquitted Goulet of four felonies, finding him guilty of two misdemeanors.

Portland investigators found evidence that Goulet secretly taped another victim as well. He admitted on the stand to video recording women. People close to the case, who did not want to be identified, said the jury did not see what everyone else connected to the case did -- that something was wrong with Goulet.

And, Tuesday, even before the shootout, Goulet foreshadowed what was to come, texting his twin brother, Jeffrey, "I'm in big trouble. I love you."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Memorial Services
When: 11 a.m. Thursday
Where: Kaiser Permanente Arena, 140 Front St., Santa Cruz
Details: A motorcade will begin before the service at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, 2601 E. Lake Ave., Watsonville, and continue to the Kaiser Permanente Arena. Time and route to be announced.